


a place i longed for but could never reach

by miragedark



Category: Ensemble Stars! (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M, Other, i'll update these tags as it's needed, like theyll definitely change
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-17
Updated: 2020-11-17
Packaged: 2021-03-10 07:40:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27609842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miragedark/pseuds/miragedark
Summary: After being thrown out of paradise, Jun finds his way back in the most unlikely turn of events.
Relationships: Sazanami Jun/Tomoe Hiyori
Comments: 6
Kudos: 14





	a place i longed for but could never reach

**Author's Note:**

> welcome to my brainchild!! i've been sitting on this au for about two-ish years and i have decided that now i'll finally do something about it!! this is definitely going to be a longer/multi-chapter fic and i have a few things planned so please look forward to them!
> 
> the rest of the fic will take place post canon, while jun is in university, however the prologue here is set in the enstars ! era.

Jun rocked back and forth on his heels, knocking twice at the door of Ibara’s office. With the days until SS rapidly counting down, Ibara had been spending more and more time buried in work between classes and practices. Jun was almost certain he slept in his CosPro office—there was a small couch, and Jun suspected a rolled-up futon could easily fit inside the closet. On a cold Thursday nearing the end of November, Ibara had instructed Jun to meet him at the office an hour after their daily rehearsal, shooting Hiyori a sharp glare that had  _ Jun  _ feeling uneasy even if it wasn’t directed at him. Such meetings were typical with Ibara, the producer holding progress meetings with individual Eden members every other week. There was no reason that Jun should have felt any more apprehension than  _ normal _ for this week's meeting—yet he couldn’t shake the feeling that something wasn’t right. Hiyori had been jumpy and irritable all day, Ibara had been entirely too quick to leave rehearsal, and Nagisa refused to meet his eyes where he normally held the contact with a high degree of certainty. 

The door swung open, and Ibara called Jun into the office. He was filing a few papers almost nonchalantly, a pen tucked behind his right ear and balanced precariously on the edge of his glasses. His wordlessness was off-putting: as much as Ibara acted like a business professional, he didn’t actually stop talking often. Additionally, he never failed to welcome any expected guess into his office, including those he was closest to. The usual  _ “Welcome, Jun, please be seated,”  _ was instead replaced with a too-long beat of silence. 

The second-year gave a few quick glances around the office as he waited for Ibara to speak. Since the first time he had ever seen it, the office seemed to have grown more industrial, almost weirdly clinical, a room made entirely of sharp edges and cold materials. The furniture was dark, and the shades on the wall-spanning windows opposite Ibara’s desk were partially drawn, blocking out the last bits of late afternoon sunlight. White fluorescent lights kept the room bright, but they made Jun feel like a creature being placed in the bright like of a microscope, prepared for the most careful and personal of inspections.

“As you are aware, I have summoned you for a performance review.” Finally, the silence broke. Jun was grateful for Ibara’s action, he knew better than to try to interrupt or speak over the other. He was convinced by now that there was something  _ wrong  _ with the atmosphere in the room, he couldn’t have been imagining it—there was some clear bit of elevated tension that made the hair on the back of his neck stand up as Jun cautiously made his way across the room.

“Yea. What about it?” He sat down on the couch across from Ibara’s desk, the cold temperature of the stiff leather seeping through the fabric of his uniform. He held his school bag on his lap, fingers curled  _ just _ too tightly around the strap. This was the part where Ibara would usually pull out his laptop and begin hammering away at all of Jun’s weak points as they went over practice footage together for hours on end. But this time, he remained as he was, clipping another stack of papers together and signing the topmost one with a small sigh. Clicking his pen closed, Ibara raised a cold glare to Jun’s own increasingly uneasy one.

“Your unit activities with Eden will hereby be terminated.”

Jun felt his blood run cold, eyes widening as he stared at Ibara. Despite the constant feelings of inferiority that plagued him, Jun found himself fighting disbelief, his heart racing and hands curling tightly along the front edge of the desk. Had Ibara officially overworked himself to the point of insanity? Not to mention, this wasn’t the sort of sugar-coated malice Ibara tended to use in his everyday language. It was unnervingly blunt, and not how Jun felt he would see the other approach such a situation.

“Terminated? Are you insane? SS is in...what, a few weeks?” Jun stood up, his bag falling to the floor with a dull  _ thwump  _ as it hit the ground. Ibara’s glare as he approached was cold and calculating, nearing the point that it made Jun want to back away from the producer. Still, he held his ground, arms crossed defensively. He wanted to believe that Ibara was in some sleep deprivation-induced haze, and truly had no idea what he was saying.

“Ibara, do you know what you’re saying? Has the sleep deprivation finally gotten to you?”

“Jun, you have continuously underperformed when compared to the standards of Eden, while being issued multiple warnings about your failure to keep up. Additionally, with the connection to your father's name, people have been speculating about your ability. This attention is ultimately impacting Eden negatively, and we cannot afford any hits to our  _ reputation _ as we approach the Winter Live.” Looking entirely unbothered, Ibara continued organizing the files on his desk, neatly tapping the papers into orderly piles before clipping them and storing them in the well-oiled desk drawers. There it was—that was the sort of language he was used to hearing Ibara use, and it nearly made his heart stop where it was currently racing away in his throat.

“Well—what about Adam and Eve?” A panicked attempt to find footing as the ground began to fall from under him, Jun thought. Ibara was methodical to a fault, and there was no way he would leave no provisions for such a large part of Eden’s image if this really  _ was _ happening.

“The sub-units will cease activities until we find a suitable fourth member for Eden. That timeframe is undetermined, for now. Securing victory at SS is our greatest mission, and for that reason, we have enacted these measures.” No surprises there, of course. Jun wasn’t an idiot, and he had heard rumors that a classmate of his was being considered behind the scenes to take up his place in Eden should anything happen.

“So this was a universal decision? You didn’t even think to talk to  _ me _ first?”

“A mostly universal choice, yes. His Highness has had some reservations, which is why I was quite insistent on speaking with you alone. However, we have determined this is the best course of action for the unit Eden. Truthfully, your opinions on this issue have no weight in regards to the final decision. We have found your performance to be underwhelming at best, and therefore you are no longer welcome within our paradise. Surely, you can at least comprehend that?” The growing aggression underlying Ibara’s words took a sudden spike upwards, enough for Jun to take a step back. Yet, that wasn’t the thing that brought him the most unease.

_ We…our paradise... _

So in the end, as he had always suspected, Hiyori’s kindness was just a stunt. Given what sparse information he knew about both the noble and the Yumenosaki revolution, it didn’t shock him that the other could be simply using him to accelerate his own performance. Hiyori always spoke of putting smiles on his fan’s faces, but that didn’t mean he was the easiest person to work with onstage. Overall, it should have been an unsurprising detail, and Jun didn’t even feel surprised at the thought that his selfish roommate wouldn’t bat an eye at the thought of him being ‘terminated’, as Ibara had so gently put it. Yet, he couldn’t keep himself from feeling hurt over it, that pestilent worry of incompetence growing stronger every day. 

Ibara had dismissed him so quickly after that, waving him out of the office and leaving him to make his way to the bus station just outside of Cospro’s tall office building alone. The drive back to Reimei was short. Too short, actually, not long enough for him to gather his feelings and be mentally prepared enough for the confrontation that he knew was coming with Hiyori.

Jun closed the door behind him, making a point to face the wall instead of meeting Hiyori. He could hear the soft clinking of the tags on Mary’s collar as Hiyori clearly was petting her. Probably sitting on his bed too, holding the dog on his lap as he liked to do with his phone in his free hand.

“Jun-kun…” The voice came too soon, and Jun turned to face it with a quiet sigh. Hiyori’s expression was unusually somber, the sort of face he tended to save for when he thought Jun wasn’t looking. He hadn’t seen this sort of face on Hiyori in a long time, not since before the summer ended while his relationship with Nagisa had still been rocky. There was some shuffling as Mary moved to the floor, and Hiyori’s quiet footsteps approached him from behind. He could nearly feel his presence behind him, and finally, a warm hand landed on his shoulder.

“I don’t wanna talk to you right now.” Jun shoved away the intrusive hand, spinning to face Hiyori with his own hands curled into fists. He was almost certain he’d (embarrassingly) started crying, months of self-doubt and speculation about the uncertainty crashing down in that moment. There was some horrible urge within him to throw a punch to get Hiyori to back off, probably born from a lifetime of being subjected to the receiving end of that, of being brought up in a world where violence was the way to get people to cooperate—a world he knew he was going to go back to sooner and later. Eden hadn’t been a turning point for him, it had been a momentary respite from his normal life.

“You need to.” Hiyori held his hand to his chest as if he’d been burned by Jun’s touch, a clear offense written on his face.

Jun pushed past Hiyori, avoiding contact with him as he made his way to his bunk. “Y’know, I’ve worked my whole life to get here. I didn’t have this handed to me like you did.” He didn’t try to bury the vitriol in his tone. As he all but threw himself down into the bunk he made an effort to point his eyes to the ceiling, trying to avoid the critical gaze of Jin Sagami plastered right next to his bed.

“It’s not my fault! I  _ tried  _ to help you. It’s not  _ my  _ fault if Ibara says you aren’t good enough.” Hiyori was nearly stomping as he made his way over to the bunk, hands curling around the metal railing as he glared at Jun. Mary had made her way to her bed on the other side of the room, and she was watching the two of them from a distance.

“Of course you’d say that. You’re always right, aren’t you? You wouldn’t understand being in the wrong and making an ass out of yourself no matter how many times I explain it to you.” Jun sat up to face Hiyori, glaring at him in silence for a moment before letting his eyes drop. The usual shine in Hiyori’s eyes was gone, and Jun knew that Hiyori was hurting from the decision too, even if he didn’t want to acknowledge it. His words were only throwing salt in both of their words, and yet he couldn’t put the filter on them that was so desperately needed.

Hiyori’s silence as he retreated to his own bunk was telling, and Jun decided to ignore any implications that it made. 

The following days were filled with Hiyori’s desperate attempts to keep Jun on his good side. It was almost pathetic, how Hiyori would show up with food he liked, how he would make sure Mary was safely tucked into Jun’s bunk at night, how he would wait for him after class and make an attempt to initiate a conversation with Jun. The effort was appreciated, but it didn’t  _ help  _ the jealousy, not when Hiyori was still enjoying activities with Eden while Jun was forced to watch from the sidelines. Slowly, Hiyori began to distance himself as he realized that the attempts were only bothering Jun more, rather than keeping Hiyori in his favor.

Although Jun had a feeling he wasn’t supposed to tell anyone about his sudden dismissal, given that he kept his enrollment as a special student, there were two people he ended up confiding in. The first was Makoto, who he’d stayed close with after the summer performances at Yumenosaki. Spreading the word outside of Reimei was certainly safer than telling anyone within the academy, on the off chance that the information got out. Ibara certainly wouldn’t take kindly to Jun doing anything that wounded Eden’s perfected image.

Yet the other person he spoke to was a Reimei student. Tatsumi Kazehaya, the revolutionary solo idol who had caused waves within the system Reimei employed to keep their top students in their positions. Not only was he one of the only level-headed people in the special students' course, he had  _ faith.  _ Jun never counted himself as a particularly religious person, but it certainly couldn’t hurt to put in a good word with any god and a wish that by some miracle, he would be welcomed back to Eden after SS.

Both Tatsumi and Makoto were as horrified as Jun felt. There was solace in that fact, the proof that he had been done an injustice and he wasn’t simply overreacting to the inevitable. Having people who genuinely believed that he deserved better eased a bit of the strain on his heartstrings, at least in the moments where he was able to keep away from Hiyori and all of the reminders he brought about what could have been.

Jun was sick of those reminders almost instantly. Sick of every time Hiyori flounced into their room with a bright smile, sweaty and worn-down as he was, after rehearsals. Sick of hearing him talk cheerfully on the phone with Nagisa about their upcoming plans, sick of hearing him hum songs that Jun no longer recognized as he got ready in the mornings and filled their dorm with the overpowering smell of apples and floral perfumes. It grew from a nagging annoyance to a dull, constant ache, one that wore away at his senses and nearly numbed him to any feeling that wasn’t anger. He couldn’t lash out at anyone, really, and he didn’t have the place to lash out at anyone, and so Jun was quick to internalize that anger and spin it back on himself. There would always be darkness inside him, and he had accepted that long ago. But with every passing day, that black hole swelled in size as it consumed the light and matter fed into it from Reimei’s campus and Hiyori’s blinding smiles.

The night of SS was the worst night he could have imagined. Jun wouldn’t lie and say that he hadn’t been hoping for their victory, or that he hadn’t streamed the live on his phone and marveled at the three talented figures he once stood with. As much as the blindside had left him reeling, he couldn’t bring it upon himself to wish any hurt  _ upon them,  _ too. It nauseated him to hear Ibara’s clever scheming, how he declared to a shocked audience that Jun Sazanami had been forced to withdraw from idol activities due to a personal injury. Watching them perform left him feeling hollow inside, a soul-deep void left behind with no way to repair it.

As fate would have dictated it, Eden won SS without him. Maybe if they’d lost, he’d have the right to be bitter, petty, to point and say  _ ‘Even without me, you couldn’t do it. _ ’ He didn’t have the strength to speak out against them or their well-earned success. But it hurt, dear  _ god  _ it hurt when Hiyori came home...came  _ back  _ that night in the small hours of the morning, trailing glitter and confetti across their dorm and hanging his jacket over the back of Jun’s desk chair. When he closed his eyes and pretended to be asleep while Hiyori prodded at him and tried for his attention, before withdrawing with a small sigh. But it hurt the most when Hiyori refused to let him be kicked out of the dorm during the spring term, insisted on trying to rekindle whatever friendship they’d had between them.

It was clear by that point that he held some degree of regret about what had happened to Eden and Jun’s place in it, but that he was entirely powerless to  _ change  _ it. With Nagisa as the standing leader and Ibara pulling all of the strings, Hiyori was likely left with little input as to what Eden did. Jun didn’t really want to know what was going on behind the scenes, but it was obvious that as the spring term went on, the light inside Hiyori began to fade away just as it had when Jun had first met him.

Perhaps it would have been kinder to accept the hand extended so graciously to his pitiful soul. It would have been reasonable,  _ maybe _ , to cling onto the salvation that was chasing after him. But Jun was a pessimist at heart. Every single failed attempt was futile as could be. He simply held too much bitterness in his heart to ever accept any of the gestures Hiyori made towards him. As they persisted, living with the other went from a minor nuisance to an ordeal of simply  _ surviving  _ until graduation. When that fated day finally arrived, the weather was as sunny as the first time they’d met in a spare practice studio, and along with it came the relief of knowing that he’d never have to see Hiyori Tomoe, ever again.

**Author's Note:**

> updates on this will probably be pretty sporadic since i don't have a set writing schedule, but i hope you'll follow along! <3  
> twt: smilingnoble


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